Prohibition: Genius or Idiocy?

Origins

There have been arguments surrounding Prohibition even for the United States became independent. Originally, Protestants did not see alcohol as evil; instead, it was considered to be a gift from God. Drunkenness was condemned, but considered the fault of the drunkard. The drink itself was not considered to blame. But moral controls did not prove to be very strong, so some Protestants took to legal methods to stop drunkenness. In May of 1657, the General Court of Massachusetts banned all strong drink, including rum, wine, brandy, and "strong water". Soon after the Revolutionary War, the U.S government placed taxes on whiskey to help pay off their war debts. Some social reformers supported the whiskey tax became they figured that a "sin tax" would help more people realize the dangers of alcohol. But the tax backfired when the Whiskey Rebellion occurred in Western Pennsylvania in 1791. The Whiskey Tax wasn't repealed until Thomas Jefferson and his Republican Party defeated George Washington's and Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party in the presidential elections in 1800. Other Founding Fathers also dealt with Prohibition. One was a respected doctor named Benjamin Rush. In 1784, He wrote a whole book entitled, The Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Human Body and Mind. In his book, Rush argued that too much alcohol was dangerous for men's bodies and minds; he even labeled drunkenness as a sickness! Do note, however, that Rush was not a supporter of prohibition; rather he supported moderation (the moderating of alcohol use, not the ban of it). Not all founding fathers were staunch supporters of prohibition. George Washington, for one, spent one quarter of his expenses on alcohol!

Rush's ideas became popular in some parts of the U.S. In 1789, 200 farmers in Connecticut formed a temperance association (a association lobbying for the ban of alcohol). Other such association were formed in Virginia in 1800 and in New York in 1808. Other associations and society were founded in the 1810s and 1820s, many of them being very large. One of the biggest was the American Temperance Society, also known as the ATS. which was founded in 1826. By 1835, it had over 1,500,000 members and over 8,000 local groups (though between 35 to 60 percent of branches were composed of women)! Drinking habits advocated, however, were a bit strange. Men were still allowed to drink, and many considered it very healthy. Women, on the other hand, believed that "true motherhood" meant no alcohol. Since middle-class women were considered to be the moral authorities in their respective households, they refrained from drinking alcohol, as they believed that alcohol was a threat to family life. Temperance movements, however, may not have been without cause. The average American drank 1.7 bottles of hard alcohol every single week in 1830. That's three times the amount drunk per week in 2010!

The prohibition, or "dry" movement as it was popularly known, kept going at full speed during the 1840s. The dries were getting full support from alcohol-abstaining protestants denominations, such as the Methodists. Now the focus was not linger on just not drinking alcohol; now the dries attacked all aspects surrounding alcohol, such as bars and saloons. Prohibition-supporting preachers began to connect liquor-carrying saloons with prostitution; one such preacher was Presbyterian minister Mark A. Matthews. The dries campaigned for prohibition in various states, with some success. Maine banned the manufacture and sale of any kind of liquor in 1851. But it didn't last long, and was repealed in 1856. The American Civil War (1861-1865) caused people too many problems to have time to think out prohibition. As a result, the dries became marginalized.

As the Civil War drew to a close, the Industrial Revolution began to drive at full speed. More and more people were moving to the cities. Special "workingmen" bars were popular social places there; men visited to get some rest from their jobs and from their families. The brewing industry soon cashed in on this. Many saloons were financed by a brewer; as a result, they were contracted to sell only the brewer's liquor. Many saloons also provided for customers a "free lunch", which was heavily salted food served with the beer.

But not for long! In 1869, a new political party advocating prohibition was formed (it was called, unimaginatively, the Prohibition Party). A new association called the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU for short) was founded in 1873. The WCTU wanted to ban alcohol in order to stop abuse from drunk husbands. How did they do this? Through education! The WCTU believed that if the children were educated, a "dry" sentiment would naturally follow that would eventually result in total prohibition. Frances Willard, the second president of the WCTU, organized it in a "union of women from all denominations, for the purpose of educating the young, forming a better public sentiment, reforming the drinking classes, transforming by the power of Divine grace those who are enslaved by alcohol, and removing the dram-shop from our streets by law". Following Willard's "Do Everything" doctrine, women began to use temperance as an excuse to enter politics and campaign for other progressive issues such as labor laws and prison reforms, even though they still didn't have the right to vote! The dries finally scored a long-awaited victory in 1881, when Kansas issued total prohibition in its state Constitution. Many states and counties began to follow suit. With the third party system in place,

The Progressive Era (1890-1920) saw increased hostility towards bars and saloons. A new organization formed during this time was the Anti-Saloon League. This league, founded in Oberlin, Ohio in 1893, was very influential in its time. It focused purely on the issue of prohibition, unlike the Prohibition Party or the WCTU, who would also advocate other social issues (such as women's rights) as well as their one in a attempt to gain support for prohibition.

The fight for prohibition emerged right in between a conflict between rural and urban values. The United States was seeing huge amounts of immigrants flooding to the cities. Many supporters of prohibition began to associate to high crime and low morals of cities as coming from this mass of immigrants. Many dries were frightened by the influx of immigrants. In response, many adopted the doctrine of "nativism". This doctrine reasoned that America had been made great and powerful because of its white Anglo-Saxon ancestry. A massive process of Americanization was on the move around this time. Immigrant communities, who often fought for abolishing prohibition, suffered xenophobic reactions in many cities.

Many of the supporters and objectors of national prohibition were of ethnoreligious background. Prohibition was championed by pietistic Protestants, including Methodists, Northern Baptists, Southern Baptists, New School Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalists, Quakers and Scandinavian Lutherans. The Second and Third Great Awakenings had rather effectively married Protestantism and pietism together. Protestants really first began to push politically for Prohibition during the Third Party System (1850s-1890s). These groups held drinking to be a personal sin and saloons to be politically corrupt. Many organizations fought for the spread of prohibition; among them were the Women's Church Federation, the Women's Temperance Crusade, and the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction. On the other side of the argument liturgical churches such as Episcopalians, German Lutherans, and Roman Catholics. They argued that, while excessive drinking was still bad, the government should not define morality, especially to such a narrow standard. Wine is also commonly used in liturgical churches, and the priests there naturally didn't want to government to ban it. But the dries were a strong force in America. Many places that had large revival populations had plenty of support for the dries. But Even in the wet stronghold of New York City, Norwegian churches and African-Americans ran a boomine prohibition movement. The dries found extra support from African-Americans, who thought that prohibition would benefit workers, particularly African-American ones. Progressives and Protestants often worked together in campaigning for Prohibition. Most tea merchants and soda fountain makers also supported prohibition, since they figured that it would boost their sales.

The dries, however, had a slight problem. The U.S. government made big money on alcohol. Approximately fourteen percent of all federal, state, and local taxes came from the manufacture and sale of alcohol. To combat this, many dries supported the Federal Income Tax (which became law on February 3, 1913 with the 16th Amendment) . Many dries also supported the 19th Amendment, which was about women's rights. As a result, most women's rights groups also supported prohibition. The Protestants had a problem of a slightly different nature. In the Bible, Jesus drank wine, and his first miracle was turning water into wine. So some Protestants decided that the Bible was actually talking about grape juice! One group even convinced a scholar to rewrite the Bible and leave out all the parts about alcohol!

Prohibition activists promoted their cause through going to bars and singing and praying there. They also would go and urge saloon owners to stop selling alcohol. Some activists, however, went to the extreme to stop alcohol usage in bars. One of these was Carrie Nation. She would storm into saloons with a hatchet and smash bottles of liquor with it. She'd also go and scold customer there!

Prohibition was a fierce issue in U.S courts as well. Many juries and judges were sympathetic towards prohibition; yet many cases still ruled against total prohibition. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan said in 1887 during his famous Mugler vs. Kansas court case:

"We cannot shut out of view the fact, within the knowledge of all, that the public health, the public morals, and the public safety, may be endangered by the general use of intoxicating drinks; nor the fact established by statistics accessible to every one, that the idleness, disorder, pauperism and crime existing in the country, are, in some degree... traceable to this evil."

In 1890, a court case, known as Crowley v. Christensen, was held in California. It was trying to decide when total prohibition was constitutional or not. The Supreme Court of California ruled prohibition as constitutional. Justice Field gave a speech, in which he declared,

"The statistics of every state show a greater amount of crime and misery attributable to the use of ardent spirits obtained at these retail liquor saloons than to any other source."

The dries and wets had strong factions in many states, and the battle was tense. During the election in 1916, the Democrat president Woodrow Wilson and Republican rival Charles Evans Hughes squared off for the presidency. Both the Democrat and Republican parties ignored the prohibition issue, since the election result was expected the be close and none of the candidates wanted to upset some part of his party. So the prohibition continued be be highly debated by the people but ignored by the government. But all that was about to change.

On January 3, 1917, the 65th Congress convened, with things looking grim for the wets. There were outnumbered in Congress with 140 dries for every 64 wets in the Democratic party and 138 dries for every 64 wets in the Republican Party. Things got even worse for the wets when America declared war on Germany and dragged itself into the First World War. German-Americans formed a large part of the wets; now they were removed from government and any protests were ignored. Things for the dries, however, took a turn for the better. They now had a new argument for prohibition. They argued that prohibition would allow additional resources to be freed for the war effort, especially the grain. "War prohibition" gave life to the movement. The Senate quickly introduced an bill for an amendment for nationwide prohibition on December 18, 1917. By the end of the month, both the House of Representatives and the Senate had passed the amendment and it was sent out to the states to be ratified. While the states were busy ratifying the Eighteenth Amendment, the U.S. Congress passed the Wartime Prohibition Act, which banned any liquor with an alcohol content of greater than 2.75 percent. This act, which was passed on November 18, 1918, was designed to save grain of the WWI effort, though by the time it had been passed, the armistice ending World War I had already been signed a week before. The Wartime Prohibition Act took effect on June 30, 1919. Many people nicked July 1, 1919, the "Thirsty-First". By January 16, 1919 (by which time World War I was over), 36 out of 49 states had ratified the 18th amendment. Eventually, out of all the states in the Union, only Connecticut and Rhode Island did not ratify it.

Prohibiton

On October 28, 1919, National Prohibition Act, popularly known as the Volstead Act, was passed, which was designed to enforce the new law. The Volstead act set up the legal definition for intoxicating beverage (0.5 percent or more alcohol by volume), as well as the penalties for anyone caught making or selling that beverage. Although Woodrow Wilson vetoed the new act, Congress overturned his veto and approved the Volstead Act anyway. Prohibition became the law of the United States of America on January 16, 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. To reinforce the new law, the government set three new federal agencies to the task. Their names were the following:

United States Coast Guard Office of Law Enforcement

US Treasury Department IRS Bureau of Prohibition

US Department of Justice Bureau of Prohibition

​The government also appointed 1,520 Federal Prohibition agents (or police to you and me) to enforce the new amendment.

Some people liked Prohibition and thought it was good for America. People from the Progressive Movement thought it would be beneficial to society. Most women also supported it, though some groups, such as the Woman’s Organization for Prohibition Reform, fought against it. Other groups that supported Prohibition were southerners, blacks, and people from rural areas. Some, though, saw through the hypocritical stance that many drys took. Actor Will Rogers joked once about Prohibition in the South:

"The South is dry and will vote dry. That is, everybody sober enough to stagger to the polls."

Many drys were extremely confident in Prohibition. U.S. Senator and the "father of Prohibition" Morris Sheppard once remarked:

"There is as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a humming-bird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail."

But some were determined to stop it. Doctors, for one, were totally against Prohibition. That's because alcohol was a widely used prescription in hospitals at that time. Their chance came in 1921 when Congress held special hearings on the value of beer in medicine. When that failed, medical professionals all across the United States began to lobby for Prohibition's repeal. Wine, however, could still be used as medicine. Some doctors would make loads of money from selling alcoholic medicine. However, this made them targets for robberies by gangsters and such! These thugs would then sell the doctor's medicine.

Popular songs protesting against Prohibition became popular at this time. When Edward VIII (who was Prince of Wales at the time) returned to England from a tour of Canada in 1919, he told his father, King George V, of a song he'd heard at a Canadian border town.

Four and twenty Yankees, feeling very dry,Went across the border to get a drink of rye.When the rye was opened, the Yanks began to sing,"God bless America, but God save the King!"

Unfortunately for American politicians, alcohol was not illegal in neighboring countries. Breweries and distilleries in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Canada made lots of money because its products were either being bought by visiting Americans or smuggled into the U.S.A by gangsters and bootleggers (this nickname originated in the 1620s-1630s, because back then, alcohol smugglers used to hide booze in the top, or "leg", of their large boots). The Detroit River was a major entry point for alcohol from Canada, possibly because the American government had trouble patrolling it properly. The US government wasn't happy about all this. They complained to the British Colonial Office in London that British officials in Nassau, Bahamas, were deliberately undermining U.S law. But the Brits refused to do anything about it! The British never fully understood the Prohibition. Winston Churchill himself once said:

Prohibition is "an affront to the whole history of mankind."

If you were an middle-class or rich American during Prohibition and you wanted to drink some alcohol, you would probably go to a speakeasy. To enter, you had to whisper a secret password to a guard inside the door )the word "speakeasy" actually means "whisper"). People from all kinds of jobs and social rungs came to speakeasies; even cops could be seen there! Alcohol would often be served in tea pots as tea; altohugh alcohol could be hiideen in many other objects, from hot-water bottles to flower vases! If the police happened to drop by, waiters quickly hid all the booze, while gangsters scampered to a getaway car waiting outside, likely in a back alley. While clients drank, live music and dance would often play on a stage. Jazz was a popular choice; in fact, speakeasies helped popularize jazz in America. Jazz began in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, and soon migrated north top Chicago and New York City. Different cities began to create their own diverse styles of jazz. The Great Depression caused a mass migration around the U.S., causing jazz to circulate even further. In addition to popular speakeasies helping popularize jazz, new devices for recording sound and films with sounds helped jazz soar in popularity very quickly. Jazz also helped integrate people of various races together, as mostly white folk went to listen to mostly black musicians playing jazz. But jazz at a speakeasy could be dangerous for musicians. To play it safe, pianist "Jelly Roll" Morton kept a pistol in his piano!

​Before Prohibition, the alcohol industry was becoming more and more industrialized. With the arrival of the Volstead Act, the process was reversed. The alcohol industry suffered a major economic downturn. With large alcohol plants having been shut down, ordinary citizens began to make their own alcohol. As a result, the efficiency of mass creation and mass sale of alcohol was essentially reversed. Interestingly, however, this result was not cased by the 18th Amendment. The 18th Amendment had not clarified what an "intoxicating beverage" was. So many breweries presumed that they would still be allowed to make alcoholic beverages of weak or moderate strength. They were in for a terrible surprise when the Volstead Act rolled around and defined exactly what "intoxicating alcohol" was (0.5 percent or more of alcohol by volume). With the fall of the alcohol plant came the fall of the saloon. And with the fall of the saloon came the fall of the tradition of drinking as being strictly macho, done only by men. Now American women found it easier and easier to drink alcohol. This become possible due to the fact the speakeasies were popular with all sexes. Since speakeasies were a semi-public environment, if a woman went there to drink, everyone would see it. But that soon became perfectly normal, and a woman drinking alcohol became a socially acceptably occurrence. When alcohol became legal again, it brought about a change in the target of alcoholic beverage sellers. Now they were keen to sell alcohol to women as well as to men.

If you were a moderate drinker, then alcohol could easily come your way. What what about if you were a heavy drinker, or even an alcoholic? Well, if you didn't care about your habit, then finding alcohol was usually a breeze. But if you saw your habit as destructive and dangerous, then finding help could be a problem. Self-help societies had just about vanished with the alcohol industry. The first post-Prohibition alcohol self-help group, Alcoholics Anonymous (also known as AA) wasn't formed until 1935.

​Although the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol, there was a catch in it. Section 29 clearly allowed people to make up to 200 gallons per year of wine and cider from fruit "on the legal fiction that it was a non-intoxicating fruit-juice for home consumption" (but don't even think about making beer!). As a result, some vineyards continued to grow grapes, though only for home use. Another loophole was that the Eighteenth Amendment only forbid manufacture; it did NOT forbid consumption. As a result, thousands of rich and middle-class people stockpiled liquor in the days leading up to January 17. Thousands of warehouses, saloons, club store rooms, liquor retailers and wholesalers were sold out of all things alcoholic. Even politicians stored alcohol for the coming drought. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson had a large stockpile of alcohol with him in the White House; when his second term ended, he had the whole stash moved to his house in Washington! The next president, Warren G. Harding, had his own massive supply moved into the White House after his inauguration.

​If you had forgotten to stockpile liquor, ran out, or just couldn't afford to do so, there were other ways to cheat Prohibition. Many stores sold liquid and semi-solid grape concentrates called "wine bricks" or wine blocks". One the boxes on these juices, the following notice was printed:

"After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine."

Whoever's idea that product was, the profits from it were tremendous. From 1920 to 1925, grape growers in California were forced to expand their cultivated land by 700 percent in order to keep up with the demand for grape concentrates. One enterprising store owner sold nine different varieties of wine blocks: Port, Angelica, Tokay, Sauterne, Riesling, Claret, Burgundy, Virginia Dare, and Muscatel. But public stores wasn't the only place were you could find alcohol. Some drug stores sold a special "medicinal" wine which was 22 percent alcohol. The wine was given a medicinal taste to make it legal to sell. Some people would pace the streets in towns and cities selling hot-water bottles...filled with whiskey!

​If you were a Christian priest or minister, you could still buy sacramental wine for religious use. Jewish rabbis could also buy sacramental wine, and later sell it to other Jews for use during the Sabbath or holidays. But in order for either Christian ministers or Jewish rabbis to buy wine, they had to belong to certain interreligious organizations. The U.S. Bureau of Internal Revenue kept a list of religious organizations that were currently licensed to buy wine. On the Jewish side on the cube, four rabbinical organizations were permitted to buy wine. This, unfortunately, led to much competition over memberships, since the groups that had permission to use sacramental wine could use that to get donations for an affiliated institution. If your group wasn't on the list of approved ones, then don't worry; you'd probably get the wine anyway. The law about sacramental wine had a few loopholes in it, resulting in unauthorized agents and even complete impostors going and buying wine!

​But not everyone was a preacher or a rabbi, so many households took to making their own hard alcohol. This type of brew was called "bathtub gin" the northern cities, while rural areas in Virginia, Georgia North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee called the stuff "moonshine". Most homes brewed hard liquor instead of beer because good beer can be rather hard to make. It was ironically easy to but ingredients for beer or hard alcohol during Prohibition. Many stores cashed in on the underground drinking craze and sold the ingredients which anyone could just go and buy. Among the items sold were vermouth, benedictine, and scotch mash. You could even buy ethyl alcohol at these stores (though it was likely to have been poisoned by the U.S. government). But if you tried to sell your homemade wine or beer, you could get in trouble fast. The government relentlessly chased down home-brew sellers, not just because it was illegal, but also because the U.S. government wasn't able to tax the sale. To avoid getting caught by "revenue agents" or "revenuers" (the common name for agents of the Bureau of Prohibition), bootleggers in southern states began to improve their cars by enhancing their vehicles's suspension and engine. The result was a faster car. This car, known as a "moonshine runner" or a "shine runner", was developed to be fast enough to outrun federal agents. In cities, gangsters had another way of smuggling alcohol. They would pay mothers to carry illegal booze in their strollers instead of babies!

​If you couldn't but or make your own alcohol, their were other brews you could drink. Some of them are listed below:

"Sweet whiskey". This brew was made from ether, nitric, and sulfuric acids! Imagine what it would do to your stomach!

Alcohol brewed from wood. If you drank this, you would go blind!

Car antifreeze. This one was deadly. If you filtered it through a loaf of bread, it was then supposed to be safe. It wasn't.

Perfume

Embalming fluids

Not only had the popularity of alcohol gone up, but so had the price. In 1930, the Prohibition Commissioner released a report on the effects of the Prohibition. They discovered some surprising facts. In 1919, the year before the Volstead Act was passed, Americans were each spending 17 dollars a year on alcohol. By 1930, the number had more than doubled to 35 dollars per year (no need to adjust the amount for inflation, because there was no inflation during the period!)! The reason for this sudden rise was the fact the alcohol had suddenly become a lot scarcer, thanks to the U.S. legislature.

​Ironically, Prohibition actually made strong alcohol more popular instead of less popular. It also gave a massive boost and loads of cash to organized crime. Before 1920 and Prohibition, the mafia in America had concentrated on prostitution, theft, and gambling. Now they began to partake more and more in the bootlegging business. In addition, a new black market emerged on alcohol, one which was as violent as it was profitable. New mafia and gangsters bosses became rich from selling forbidden liquor. The typical illegal alcohol beverage maker could make an average of 3 billion dollars per year in the form of illegal untaxed income. Many gangsters were actually bribing police to turn the other way when bootlegging, theft, or even murder was taking place. Even staunch Prohibition enforcer Grover Whalen was paid 20,000 dollars a month by gangsters during his time as New York Police Commissioner to keep from arresting them (though Whalen only served for two months before being forced to resign for being too harsh to protesters!). Big crime and "accidents" such as Chicago's St. Valentine's Day Massacre became common-place in some places. Racketeering became widespread in the U.S, as rival gangs fought to dominate states and cities. Cities literally became battlegrounds. And one of the biggest of these was Chicago. Gangsters and bootleggers from Miami to Canada swarmed to Chicago. It boasted 10,000 speakeasies and was the headquarters of Al Capone and Bugs Moran. Chicago was a crime-city city, with theft, murder, and other prohibition-related crimes rife here. New York City was an even bigger hub for bootleggers, with between 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasies operating right under the government's searching nose by 1925. A study done in 1920 and 1921 studied 30 cities across the U.S. They found that since the Prohibition had started, crime had increased by 24 percent. In addition, theft was up by 9 percent, murder by 12.7 percent, assault by 13 percent, and drug addiction by an astonishing 44.6 percent! The study, correctly, blamed the rise of crime to “black-market violence”. They also blamed the rise on the fact that much police and police resources were currently sidetracked on enforcing Prohibition, letting these other crimes go free. Sadly for Prohibition supporters, who had claimed that Prohibition would reduce crime, it had actually go on to increase crime and had also managed to crate a brand new black market. Even better, this black market was dominated by vicious mafia thugs and gangster organizations. Hundreds of gangsters, criminals, and civilians were killed in the 13 years that Prohibition ran. As a result of these new occurrences, many people began to voice their displeasure of Prohibition, even as early as in 1925. The journalist Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was among the first to publicly write that Prohibition was failing.

​But some of you are probably saying, "Hey, what about all those police forces you mentioned earlier? Aren't they supposed to be doing their job?" The answer is...yes, but no. You see, the 18th amendment did not set up efficient means of enforcing Prohibition. The Volstead Act, on the other hand, had set up penalties for those who broke the laws outlined in the 18th Amendment. But the federal government itself actually did very little to enforce the new law, leaving the tough job to the police and agents in the field. So the life of a policeman reinforcing Prohibition was not an easy one. Especially since the general public saw Prohibition as arbitrary and stupid. Before Prohibition many were just law-abiding citizens who liked to drink a pint or two of some alcohol from time to time. Now, that luxury was pretty much forbidden. Many saw the new law as completely unnecessary and felt okay about breaking it. As a result, many (not bribed) government agents found themselves overwhelmed by the amount of alcohol illegally manufactured and distributed. Many police officers were actually paid to simply turn a blind eye at all the alcohol No one in the U.S. government had anticipated such a result; in the end, police officers fighting prohibition just didn't have enough resources to deal with them all. Plus, the push for prohibition started by the 18th Amendment lacked any central command; as a result, federal and state government were often at odds with each other. Many attempts to set up pro-prohibition laws in the various states were shot down, mainly because of a lack of transparency between state and federal management. Lastly, the creators of the 18th Amendment had forgotten about America's diverse geography and massive land and sea borders. How could 1,520 police patrol all the valleys, mountains, swamps, lakes, rivers, and canyons of the U.S.A., as well as all the seaways, seaports and border towns? The resources and manpower needed to patrol all that would need to be enormous. Reinforcing Prohibition was, simply stated, just not practical. Not only that, it was also expensive. At the beginning of the 1920s, the Bureau of Prohibition's annual budget was 4.4 million dollars. By the end of the decade, it had shot up to 13.4 million! In 1920 and 1921, the cost of running police networks went up by 11,4 percent. The Coast Guard's annual budget was very similar to the Bureau, at 13 million dollars (though do note that the numbers provided apply only for the federal costs of reinforcing Prohibition; if state and local costs were added, the result would likely be much higher!).

Even if a honest policeman caught you and brought you to court, the chances that you would be convicted were quite low. Many juries were secretly drinking alcohol anyway. During a bootlegging trial, the jury drank the evidence, claiming to the judge that they were checking whether it was real alcohol or not (it was real). Some brewers used ingenious techniques to keep from getting caught. One such brewers was Janie Martin. She used to make alcohol in her kitchen. Police officer Jim Smith suspected her; but he never could catch her. She always denied it. Smith tried to offer her a dollar for a bottle; but that also didn't work. Finally, Martin got tried of Smith's pestering and made him a very special brew. As soon as she gave it to him, Smith arrested her. But when the matter was in court, Martin asked to have the brew tested to see if it was real alcohol. The judge ordered Smith to try it. Smith did so, and then discovered what it was. It wasn't alcohol; it was...urine! Martin was declared to be "not guilty" and the case was dismissed.

​With police lacking in power, the American government took to more extreme measures to enforce Prohibition. They began to poison industrial ethyl alcohols to prevent bootleggers and gangsters from using it. The denatured alcohol was then sold commercially. But bootleggers found out about this, and began hiring chemists to renature to alcohol and make it safe to drink. In revenge, the U.S Treasury Department ordered manufacturers to add deadlier poisons to their industrial alcohols. One of the poisons used was the notoriously deadly poison methyl alcohol. Manufacturers also sometimes sold instead of alcohol "canned heat", a type of fuel made from jellied alcohol. More commonly known as Sterno, forcing canned heat through a filter (such as a handkerchief) created a rough liquor. The liquor, however, was poisonous, though thankfully not usually deadly (this practice backfired after Prohibition when many Sterno poisoning victims united and sued the U.S. government, demanding reparations). Medical examiners from New York began to conspicuously decry these poisoning acts as dangerous to the public. And not without reason; when Prohibition finally ended. 10,000 people had died from drinking poisoned alcohol. One of the New York medical examiners was a man named Charles Norris. He went as far as to accuse the government of committing murder against its own citizens. He observed the following:

​"The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol...[Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible."

Repeal

Many Americans believed that Prohibition was biased and favored the rich. They began see Prohibition as effectively showing class distinctions in America. To them, Prohibition was most effective when used on poor people. Many of the working-class were angry at the fact that rich employers could drink alcohol from their private cellars and caches; while poor employees could not even have home-made brews without being on the wrong side of the law. Ironically, often the U.S. legislature had pushed for Prohibition; while the general public was in fact either indifferent or opposed to it.

The fatal blow that killed Prohibition came in October 1930. George Cassiday, nicknamed the "Man in the Green Hat", had been a bootlegger for ten years. He now came forward and spoke to Congress about bootlegging, as well as writing five front page articles for The Washington Post. One of the few bootleggers to go and tell his story, Cassiday made a massive impression in Congress when he stated that he estimated that 80 percent of all representatives and senators drank alcohol! The irony was that those same senators and representatives were passing laws prohibiting others to drink alcohol! Cassiday's lecture to Congress changed the tide of Prohibition, especially since the Congressional midterm elections were just two weeks away. The elections saw Congress shift from a dry congress dominated by the Republicans to a wet congress dominated by the Democrats. The Democrats had noticed that Prohibition was becoming unpopular and so began to call for its repeal.

The tide had finally turned for the wets. The dries were horrified at the crime had Prohibition was nurturing. As the dries began to abandon Prohibition, the wets began to talk of destroying organized crime, bringing in taxes from beer and alcohol, and personal liberty.

It's true that Prohibition had reduced the amount of alcohol drunk in America. And the cases of cirrhosis of the liver (an alcohol-related disease) dropped by nearly two-thirds during Prohibition. But the crime that ensued definitely made Prohibition not worth the cost. Many former supporters began to publicly admitted its failure. John D. Rockefeller, Jr, who steadfastly abstained from alcohol all his life, wrote his views in a renowned letter to Nicholas Murray Butler sent in June 1932. The letter was soon published on the front page of the New York Times. It helped greatly in speeding of the process of Repeal. In his letter, Rockefeller stated the following:

When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before.

The American public now began top eagerly look forward to Prohibition's repeal, especially those in the big cities. Hard economic times greatly helped speed Prohibition's repeal. The Great Depression had begun barely a year before, and the government desperately needed money. They figured that repealing Prohibition would regenerate desperately needed taxes and create much needed jobs for the unemployed. In addition, a black market on alcohol had also began to grow during Prohibition and was now competing with the economy, which was feeling the problems of hard economic times.

Prohibition finally ended on March 22, 1933, when U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an amendment to the Volstead Act. This amendment, called the Cullen-Harrison Act, granted the manufacture and sale of light wines and "3.2 beer" (beer with 3.2 percent alcohol by weight, or approximately 4 percent alcohol by volume). In comparison, the Volstead Act had declared any beverage with more than 0.5 percent alcohol as "intoxicating". Roosevelt was busy carrying out his government program, the "New Deal", which was designed to improve the economy and combat the effects of the Great Depression. Roosevelt understood that the government needed to successfully compete against other outer forces to be successful; one force that was currently causing the government problems was the black market created by the Prohibition. So Roosevelt supported Prohibition's repeal and the Twenty-first Amendment in an attempt to curtail the power of the alcohol black market. After signing the Cullen-Harrison Act, Roosevelt made a remark that would go down through history. A remark that portrayed how many Americans felt about Prohibition. The immortal words were as follows:

"I think this would be a good time for a beer."

Wait, what?!?

The Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect on April 7, 1933. Records show that the very next day, Anheuser-Busch, Inc, had a case of Budweiser delivered to the White House by a team of Clydesdale horses. But the Cullen-Harrison Act itself wasn't going to completely demolish Prohibition So in 1933, work went under way to have the Twenty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution approved and ratified. On December 3, 1933, the Twenty-first amendment was ratified by Utah, Pennsylvania and Ohio, dissolving the Eighteenth Amendment and permanently legalizing alcohol in the United States.

​Not everyone was happy about Prohibition being repealed. One person not happy was Heber Jeddy Grant. At that time, Grant was the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the LDS Church or the Mormons. When a plebiscite was held in Utah to try to decide whether or not to vote for Prohibition's repeal, Grant tried to sway them from voting for it. It didn't work, and Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st amendment. Grant was devastated. He later told his fellow Latter Day Saints at a general conference:

"I have never felt so humiliated in my life over anything as that the State of Utah voted for the repeal of Prohibition."

Prohibition had dealt a nearly fatal blow to the U.S. alcohol industry. Repeal gave the industry the jump-start it needed to take off. The former beer and wine tycoons were eager to sell their wares to a newly opened market. One of these was the city of St. Louis. Before Prohibition, St. Louis had been one of America's biggest alcohol manufacturers, but the ban on alcohol had effectively shut the programs down. As soon as Prohibition's repeal was evident, the city's breweries sprung into action, wanting to be the first to refill and retake the market. By March 22, the main brewery in St. Louis had already 50,000 barrels of beer ready to be sold. Many other cities and companies soon followed suit, and thousands of people were able to find jobs. However, not all the breweries sprang back to action; only half of all breweries open at the beginning of Prohibition reopened at its end. After purchasing a license to sell alcohol, stores once again began to sell the stuff to the masses. The black market on alcohol subsequently lost most its profits due to the fact that people could now buy alcohol and liquor cheaper in common stores. But all was not plain sailing for makers of home brews. To this day, U.S. federal law dishes out numerous licensing requirements for home brewers, which can make making your homemade brews quite impractical.Also, states still retained the right to choose whether they favored prohibition in their state or not. Some states evidently did not see how Prohibition was helping the mafia and black markets and their voters voted to keep Prohibition running in the state. Mississippi was the last state to repeal prohibition; it did so in 1966! Kansas forbid the sale of alcohol "by the drink" until 1987. Many counties and townships in the United States still restrict or prohibit the sale of alcohol. Many Native American tribal governments also prohibit alcohol on their reservations, and the U.S. government also prohibits alcohol on Indian reservations (although the ban is usually only reinforced when a violation of local tribal alcohol laws occurs). This is actually a normal law and predates Prohibition.

According to wine historians, Prohibition did hurt one aspect of America's alcohol industry: its wine industry. Before Prohibition, the wine industry had been very successful in the U.S, producing high-quality wines. When the wine industry started up again after Prohibition, the former high-quality productive grapes were replaced with thick-skinned grapes. This new variety made lower quality wine but was easier to transport. Many winemakers had by this time migrated from the U.S. or simply left the wine business. In addition, during Prohibition, distilled spirits were more popular than wine or even beer. The fact that spirits have more alcohol than the two was soon overcome by mixing or diluting it.

But did Prohibition reduce per-capita consumption of alcohol in the U.S.A? No one knows for sure. Some historians claim that alcohol consumption levels did not reach pre-Prohibition heights until the 1960s. Others state that alcohol consumption levels recovered a few years after Prohibition was enacted, and have since continued to rise. One thing is definite; in the decades following Prohibition, America forgot about their fears of alcohol. Since 1939, a Gallup poll survey has been conducted almost every year in the U.S. It shows that two-thirds of modern Americans of 18 years of age or older drink alcoholic beverages. Historian Nancy Koester voiced these views on Prohibition:

Prohibition was a “victory for progressives and social gospel activists battling poverty”.